Arriving in Geneva
Flicka von Hannover
I knew I was being kidnapped,
and I knew Dieter Schwarz couldn’t save me this time.
During the long flight on the private jet from Las Vegas to Geneva, Switzerland, Flicka helped Dieter with his tiny daughter, Alina, but mostly, she tried to figure out what the hell was going on and how to escape their kidnappers.
In Las Vegas,four mercenaries—or bodyguards or private security or whoever had saved her and Dieter from Pierre’s Secret Service by shoving them into the van—had also boarded the airplane, climbing up the stairs from the warm tarmac to the door that blew cold, air-conditioned air. The other thirty or so men had climbed into SUVs and sped away from the plane, back toward the public terminal and the busy freewaybeyond the end of the landing strip.
Valerian and Bastien Mirabaud had entered the plane behind her, Dieter, and Alina.
Ah, Bastien, Flicka’s silver fox—pale blue eyes and golden-silver hair—who had shadowed Flicka from casino to casino and tipped her exorbitant amounts that had sometimes made the difference between paying their rent or not being quite able to afford it. Living near the edgeof financial ruin had attuned Flicka to the importance of generosity. When she looked back at her life, she thought she’d been adequately generous, mostly, but she’d had a lot of money, back then. She wished she’d done more for the people around her.
Bastien sat far up at the front of the private jet and didn’t talk to them. Flicka wasn’t sure what she would have said to him—maybe asking,Wereyou spying on me? Why were you stalking me? Was it so you could kidnap us?—so it was probably best that he sat far away from them. She might have decked him, hoping to crack open his gray-haired head on the plane’s white walls.
Yeah, Flicka was mad. She wasfurious.Bastien had been her friend. At least, she had thought he was.
Dieter sat on a couch on the other side of the plane from whereFlicka sat. His toddler daughter Alina stood on the couch beside him. The child clutched the back cushions and stared out the windows at the ocean far below.
The toddler turned to Dieter and shouted in her baby squeak, “Daddy, we’re up in the sky!” pointing with wonder at the blue beyond the round window. Her blond curls glinted in the sunlight.
“Yes, Alina.” Dieter sat beside his baby daughteron the couch, one of his arms cinched around the child’s waist and his long legs stretching into the plane’s aisle. “Just like when we flew to Las Vegas.”
Flicka tried not to stare, but Dieter’s voice was weird. Even though she was angling her head toward other areas of the plane to pretend she wasn’t staring and eavesdropping, she watched him, trying to gauge what was going through his head.
The jet was creamy white inside, from the leather upholstery of the seats to the blond wood trim. Afternoon sun streamed through the wide portholes running down the walls as the plane banked, turning eastward toward Europe.
Flicka clutched her fingers around the armrests of the seat as the floor slanted under her feet.
Dieter leaned with the plane, bracing himself as he steadied Alina from topplingoff the couch.
Alina had grown in the last month, and her pink dress was a little too short on her skinny, pale legs. The bulky underpants that matched her dress flashed when she bent over to peer below the plane. She might need a diaper change, though she usually told them when she needed that. Luckily, Flicka had been able to grab a handful of diapers and baby supplies, stuffing them in a diaperbag, while an armed guard had walked Dieter inside their condo to retrieve the Mirabaud passports they had been traveling under.
Dieter held Alina’s waist and stared at his shoes and the floor, his face impassive. His strong, square jaw was still, not bulging as if he were angry. His muscular arm held his daughter with little effort. He responded when she said something, but he didn’t particularlytalk to her.
That was weird. He usually talked to her all the time.
Flicka watched him more closely.
Usually, with Alina, Dieter came across as a warm and affectionate father, sometimes silly when she wanted to play, and he spoke English to her with as little of an accent as he could muster. He didn’t speak with a British accent like Flicka did because he hadn’t attended Le Rosey School undera fanatical Anglophile English instructor. His inflections had always been a mishmash of British and the German-French lilt that was Swiss German. Sometimes, she could really hear the German-based Alemannic in his English.
But now, Dieter seemed subdued, and his accent was veryFrenchwhen he spoke.
Of course, his accent should be French, now that Flicka thought about it, if Dieter really wasValerian Mirabaud’s son. She’d been shocked as hell when he’d said that as they were boarding the plane. She knew Valerian Mirabaud. She knew several of Valerian’s daughters and nieces. His nieces were Bastien’s daughters, she realized. Bastien’s daughter Anaïs had been presented at Flicka’s Shooting Star Cotillion just a few years before, and they’d become great friends. How could she not haveknown that her Dieter Schwarz, herLieblingwächter,was Anaïs’s cousin and Valerian Mirabaud’s son? And why hadn’t she ever heard a proper French-Swiss accent when Dieter spoke? His accent was strongly Swiss German.
The Mirabauds were a French-Swiss family. They must speak French at home, and she’d always spoken French with Valerian Mirabaud when they’d met at events. Swiss French hadn’t changedlike Swiss German had. Swiss French was nearly indistinguishable from standard French except for a few numbers and such.
Alemannic German, orSchwiizertüütsch,had evolved to become several different languages and was a very different variety than standard, high German. It was even more specialized than Swiss Standard German,Hochdeutsch,which was mostly written rather than spoken.
Dieter spokeAlemannic with Flicka’s older brother, Wulfram, who considered himself Swiss, although Flicka rolled her eyes every time the very German Wulfie insisted on how Swiss he was.
Of course, Raphael Mirabaud had grown up speaking French, and he should have a French accent.
And he did.
When he had become Dieter Schwarz, which was a Swiss German name, Dieter had begun speaking Alemannic German, whichhe’d probably learned as a child.
